News

Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase experienced very different first quarters, as evidenced by results in their quarterly earnings reports released Friday. Wells Fargo reported a record net income of $5.9 billion for the first quarter, an increase of 14 percent from the year-ago quarter and 5 percent from Q4 2013. Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase reported profits of $5.3 billion for the quarter compared to $6.5 billion a year ago.

Despite a low inventory, single-family home sales are up 2.6 percent overall this year in Connecticut, with a 2.8 percent increase in February of this year from last year, according to the Warren Group. "We see many signs of a healthy real estate market in Connecticut," said Timothy M. Warren Jr., CEO. "We are in the third year of recovery from the crash in real estate and financial markets. People are interested in real estate once again."

NetDirector, a provider of cloud-based data and document exchange services, announced that Anthony Box has joined the leadership team as VP of Sales.

Trulia found that month-to-month asking prices nationally in urban markets rose 1.2 percent in March. Quarter-to-quarter, prices rose 2.9 percent in March, reflecting three straight months of solid month-over-month gains. Both calculations were seasonally adjusted. More encouraging is that asking prices are up a full 10 percent since last year, rising in 97 of the 100 largest metros.

According to a report put out Wednesday by University of Minnesota’s Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity (IMO), Twin Cities lenders have been treating minority mortgage applicants unequally for 10 years—first by originating an inordinate number of subprime loans to minority borrowers before the crash and then by disproportionately limiting credit access to those same communities.

Member companies of Lenders One Mortgage Cooperative achieved a new record in loan volume throughout 2013, the group reported this week. According to a release, the cooperative—a national alliance of community mortgage bankers, correspondent lenders, and suppliers of mortgage products and services—collectively originated $224 billion in volume last year, a 22 percent increase over 2012.

CRMnow, a customer relationship management (CRM) firm catering to lenders, announced a new integration between its own Mortgage iQ CRM and the LendingQB loan origination system (LOS) designed to save time and enhance data integrity for mortgage brokers and bankers.

In its weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey, Freddie Mac reported the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaging a rate of 4.34 percent (0.7 point) for the week ending April 10, a decline from 4.41 percent last week. A year ago at this time, the 30-year fixed was down nearly a full percentage point: 3.43 percent. Bankrate.com’s weekly national survey showed similar rate changes.

In a testimony given in front of the House Financial Services Committee this week, OCC chief counsel Amy Friend addressed frustrations stemming from regulatory burdens on community banks banks. Friend's testimony offered a conciliatory nod to the plight of smaller banks while noting particular ways the OCC addresses smaller bank's particular grievances with the Dodd-Frank Act.

Freddie Mac released on Wednesday an announcement "urgently reminding" servicers about the full range of relief options available to borrowers affected by flooding and other natural disasters in Washington. The company also made special note to remind servicers to consider relief policies for borrowers who work in eligible disaster areas but live in unaffected areas.